


Leviathan unchained

by atheartagentleman



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Dystopian Future, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Panic Attacks, Unhealthy Relationships, dark themes, occasional language, totalitarian regimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheartagentleman/pseuds/atheartagentleman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘You’ll all get yourselves killed,’ Grantaire stated later that night, his gaze flickering from point to point, anywhere but Prouvaire. He was clearly trying for matter-of-fact and missing by miles. Instead, he sounded like overtaught silk, his fibres creaking in protest at their mistreatment. Prouvaire wondered how long it would be before he tore apart completely.</p><p>‘It’s the right thing to do,’ he answered and softly kissed Grantaire’s bitten lips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/gifts).



> A million thanks are due to [doeskin-pantaloons](http://doeskin-pantaloons.tumblr.com) and [capricorn-child](http://capricorn-child.tumblr.com) for their truly heroic betaing jobs. Any remaining fuck-ups are my own.
> 
> There were a lot of firsts for me in writing this, so I am incredibly nervous. Sath, I hope you like it, but please don't feel obliged to.

Jean Prouvaire wept for God and turned his face to humanity.

Writhing under the scrutiny, Grantaire fiddled with his bottle before tossing back two pills at once. There was an Old World saying: drowning one’s sorrows. Was it possible to drown them in little green chemical marbles too? CH3CH2OH. Ch-ch-oh. A stutter and a release; almost an orgasm. A release of some kind, anyhow, for the words spilled from him, half-formed and wriggling from uneven lips as though trying to hide behind each other, even as he hid behind them.

‘I saw whatsername last night. You know the one. Pretty as the month of May. Flora? Not that May _is_ very pretty anymore, obviously, but you spend a while studying with a noted artist and it’s all ‘oh Mr Grantaire this one depicts --’ and ‘let me show you straight to the archive, Mr Grantaire’. Not that it ever did anyone much good. Anyway, Flora. May. Whatever. Beautiful eyes, fant _as_ tic tits -- you remember.’

Prouvaire did not remember, but that was of little consequence.

‘Well, I was walking down by the warehouses when I saw her. She didn’t see me, or I’d never have got rid of her again. She looked really well, too -- snared some ugly old top brass from Central Admin, or so I hear. They only met two days ago, but he’s _quite_ enamoured. Fucking fickle of her, you know, but still as fresh and lovely as ever, the deceitful thing. It’s not right. Then again, nothing is right. No such thing. Nonsense upon stilts! Mischievous nonsense! Right, as an adjective, is debateable, I grant you. Right, as a noun, is nought but nonsense. ‘Lie’ is also a noun. A lie. Mind you, it’s a verb too, and I rather prefer that one in its _other_ meanings. Who am I to engage in linguistics at this hour of the day though? I’d have gone over to say hi, just for old times’ sake, only she looked happy, for all it was ill-gotten and knavishly deceitful of her.’ Grantaire offered a rueful smile, stomping on things unsaid and hauling back his cheer with visible effort. The salacious grin didn’t quite make it.

‘Besides, like I said, she’d still be following me around now if I had -- fickle once, fickle twice -- and there are aspects of her I do _not_ need, if you get my drift. I do hope she looks after herself… She never could get enough of me, you know, and she’s a great girl, but I bore so very easily. I’m bored right now, even! Yes, in _your_ scintillating company, my dear Prouvaire, I feel the lassitude of ages descend upon and engulf me. I bore myself to tears -- to death -- I could fight myself just to have something to do. It is the root cause of all the past tenses of my life. Gros: past tense. Studi _ed_. I was unsuitable; I was bored. Curtains down despite and because of history. Flora-May too: past tense. Everything tastes of yesterday’s breath soon enough, and don’t get me started on what that does to the throat.’ He fell into a coughing fit, as though to illustrate his point, and lapsed into silence.

‘You and your exes,’ Prouvaire crooned as he patted Grantaire’s back until the coughing subsided. ‘Should I be jealous?’

Grantaire flashed him a watery smile, still gasping a little. ‘What can I say? I’m a hard man to resist.’ Another bout wracked his frame, dry as old nails. ‘Don’t worry though. I’ll always love you best of all.’

Prouvaire did not call him on the lie.

Instead, he pressed his lips briefly to Grantaire’s forehead and rose from his seat.

‘I must be going. The school awaits.’

Adjusting his UV goggles, he heard Grantaire settle into himself in the main room. There was the regular rattle of a bottle of pills tossed from hand to hand, but its rhythm was unbroken. He wasn’t opening it. Prouvaire fled. There were times when his presence was enough to help, when he could coax a genuine smile from R and brighten his skies just a little. Those were the almost-good times. Far worse were the days like today, when the mere weight of his gaze was enough to send one so infinitely dear to him further into his alcoholic labyrinth.

The air reeked of sand as he stepped out of their building, and it seemed to coat his tongue even through the fibres of his mask. He frowned in consternation and hurried his footsteps, because there had been no weather warnings last night, and unscheduled storms only ever meant trouble. The children would be more restive too. They always were when there was a storm on the wing, and rather than attempt to quiet them with platitudes as the teaching handbook mandated, Prouvaire subtly encouraged their behaviour.

There had been a time when humankind had cut itself off from its surroundings, had stopped feeling the visceral lurch of the thunderhead over the plains, or marvelling at the cold beauty of the stars without sending ships to harvest their bounty. Two centuries later and the debt for the silken cocoons the Old World had created was still far from paid.

Central Admin always claimed that the atmosphere had been stabilised to ensure the safety of all subjects pending the completion of regeneration technology. But since Prouvaire didn’t trust them as far as he could throw one of their monitoring units, he persisted in cultivating a healthy fear of the environment in all his pupils.

The SubTram’s mouth panted at him, and the rattle of the train shook loose his thoughts and swallowed them -- ch-ch-oh. Were Courfeyrac there, they would waggle their eyebrows significantly to remind their travelling companion of their theory about the Sub. In true dramatic fashion, they would expound to anyone who could be persuaded to hold still for long enough to listen that the thought-obliterating noise of the trains was another pernicious tactic for ensuring the docility of the population. Combeferre would shake his head in fond bemusement and Enjolras would get a speculative look, like he was seriously entertaining the notion, albeit against his own better judgment. Grantaire always retorted by professing his gratitude for what he termed the trains’ miraculous properties. It made Prouvaire, Joly and Bossuet cringe to hear it -- all the more so when he was met with the impatience and uncomprehending laughter of their other companions.

On days like these, though, the not-at-all-good days, Prouvaire could not help but agree and be thankful for the temporary respite.

The tunnel coughed him up again, blinking as he readjusted the tinted glass of his goggles once more and gathered his thoughts like knucklebones. The wind had picked up, and he was forced to brace himself against it just to reach the school gates. The warning light about the main building changed to orange just as he glanced up, and Prouvaire cursed -- but only quietly, so as not to shock the children.

Evening had fallen by the time the door to their building swung open with a faint hiss-creak-sigh and Prouvaire stumbled through, exhausted and shaking. The stairs to the apartment were a Herculean effort, almost too enormous to contemplate, making the patch of floor at their foot more inviting than it had ever seemed before. Grantaire was upstairs, though… That was enough.

Grantaire, whose upturned face was ashen and who looked no better than Prouvaire. Grantaire rose from his watch, almost tripping over himself in his haste, though there was no alcohol in his puppet-like unsteadiness. Then there were cold, rough hands framing Prouvaire’s face as Grantaire scrutinised him with spotlight focus. Finding nothing missing but the bloom in familiar cheeks, the mania left his eyes and he sagged against Prouvaire, who buckled under their combined weight, sending them both slithering down the wall in an ungainly heap.

Curled into and around Grantaire, the bats in his ribcage began to settle, no longer shrieking at pitches too awful to hear. The crook of Grantaire’s neck was as warm as his hands were cold, and his pulse far more even than the lingering ghosts of thunder Prouvaire had been unable to shake. Grantaire’s own fears allayed, Prouvaire could draw on the strength of his presence until the storm-terror faded enough to allow him to speak.

‘They had us in the cellars, of course, but I’m sure it was beautiful.’

Grantaire hummed softly in response and ran his fingers through the short hairs at his nape.

‘The sky was still lavender, like a fresh bruise, when they let us out, so I know it was one of the purple ones. They always have lightning like cracked glass… And I think it must have started out over the mountains, because it was too far off and those ones always mess with the monitoring equipment.’ He trailed off thoughtfully, then suddenly raised his head and pulled away enough to peer at Grantaire. ‘You saw it, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah. I was in my room...’

The windows in R’s room were the biggest. Made of reinforced plastiglass to withstand onslaughts like today, and letting in the yellowed sunlight of morning. ‘My last pretensions at the artistic life,’ Grantaire called it. None of them knew where he had got the funds or indeed the permits for it. He always claimed they were looking at the last physical vestiges of his inheritance, but inheritances had been officially abolished as inegalitarian a few years back. You lived by the grace of Central Admin, and any allowance remaining on death reverted to them. So Les Amis had shrugged and thought it best not to pry any further.

‘Describe it to me?’ Prouvaire entreated.

‘You’re right. It _was_ a purple one, like the wine-dark sea had been upturned, thrown like a blanket across the sky and then crumpled. It fizzed whenever the lighting struck, and each cloudhead seemed like a seam through which the beyond shone unbearably bright.’ His fingers were tight on Prouvaire’s neck, and he spoke directly into his lips. ‘Listen to me getting all pretentious and artsy. You really shouldn’t let me carry on like this, you know it only gives me airs and grand ideas.’

‘Keep going.’

‘As you wish. It didn’t so much descend from the mountains as appear out of nowhere, but there were greens and yellows in there too, and flecks of a blue so blue it was almost black and they matched the flecks behind my eyelids after each lightning strike. I always have to close my eyes after lightning. Maybe it’s because I’m a fool who stares even though I know it blinds me, or maybe it’s like the old wolf said: all the better to hear you with, my dear. In which ‘you’ means ‘the thunder’. But then you worked that out for yourself, and I hope you’ll forgive me, friend, and not bear me any ill-will for my accidental slight to your intelligence. It’s times like these though that I wish I painted. Still painted. Had ever painted. To be able to capture the fleeting brilliance of the storm, when the entire sky is backlit and livid and tearing itself open like it can’t bear its own existence anymore… To catch that forever, that would be immortality.’

Prouvaire wasn’t sure when his eyes had closed, but his world had narrowed to the scratch of Grantaire’s voice, the warmth of his breath -- damp and so very precious -- the brush of his lips as he spoke his caresses. Gentled by tales of the apocalypse, he half-slept, barely aware of being lifted -- just a fleeting impression of safety and strength -- still less of being carried to his bed. He knew it was his own bed because the sheets were cold in that way sheets only ever are when they have not been slept in for many days. He flinched, almost waking, heard a breathless apology and then there were more familiar sheets around-above-below him, and Grantaire still there, still telling him of colours and sounds and gods he might easily have made up to inhabit storms.

He slept.

When he woke, those dear lips were still pressed to his. He smiled, and the motion of it seemed to stir Grantaire, for eyelashes fluttered and wisps blinked from muddy eyes.

‘Morning.’

‘You were right about Gros.’

Prouvaire sniffed in confusion, his nose twitching.

‘Yesterday. When you asked me… well, about -- about jealousy...’ One day, maybe, Grantaire would be able to admit that one might be jealous over him. Hope, after all, was supposed to possess that miraculous property unmatched by anything else, save perhaps misery, of springing eternal.

‘So I _should_ be jealous? Although if you know where Gros even is these days, you’ll be one of a kind.’

‘No, no. Just. You were right to assume… Well. You were just right.’

The silence stretched, then: ‘It was nice to be desired, simply and honestly, for once. He didn’t care about... this,’ Grantaire gestured to himself in a way that was clearly meant to include not only his face, lopsided and stretched by scars, from single-stick fighting and possibly before, but also the murky corners of his mind. ‘Fancied himself the Erastes to my Eromenos. Of course, I wasn’t exactly suited to the part, so it couldn’t last.’

‘R --’

‘No, it’s alright. I’m not bitter about it, I promise. Or no more so than I am about anything else.’ (Meagre consolation).

‘That’s not what I was going to say. I would play the lawyer, for once, and quibble with your choice of language.’

‘Jehan, please, we have a plague of lawyers already --’

‘I wish to take issue with the phrase ‘for once’,’ Prouvaire continued in a loud tone, ignoring Grantaire’s interjection entirely.

‘Look, I know I was going on about whatsername -- I wasn’t _that_ drunk -- but really --’

‘And I wasn’t referring to her either.’ This was soft, almost plaintive, almost wounded. It was that quietness that brought Grantaire up short, stoppered up his protests, a pleading that became a frown.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘I’m not.’ A hand fisted in Grantaire’s hair, Prouvaire kissed him into silence and then beyond to whimpers, until he could no longer tell whom he had been trying to distract.


	2. Chapter 2

Prouvaire turned in the doorway at the warmth of a hand on his arm.

‘Jehan, do you have a moment sometime this week?’ Courfeyrac’s voice was quiet, their eyes wide and blinking rapidly.

‘Of course. Is something wrong?’

‘In a manner of speaking...’

‘Have you told Enjolras and Combeferre yet? Because --’

‘It’s not that kind of problem,’ Courfeyrac cut him off gently. ‘I’ll explain everything, but it’s really not something I can talk to either of them about. You’ll understand, I promise. And please don’t jump to conclusions and assume I’m dying or something.’

Prouvaire smiled a little guiltily and Courfeyrac chuckled in response.

‘No worrying, OK? Can’t have you setting frown-lines into your forehead, it will age you quite horribly and then I won’t be able to boast so much about how good-looking all my friends are.’ They reached to brush a thumb over the faint crease between Prouvaire’s brows.

‘I’m supposed to be taking the kids on a field trip to the Historical Museum on Tuesday. We need another chaperone, and your accreditation from when you had that tutoring job last year should still be valid, so you’re fine to work with children. You could come along for that?’ he offered.

‘You are a beautiful, beautiful human being, Jean Prouvaire.’

So they found themselves, three days later, explaining a diorama of an Old World house to a wide-eyed little boy who could not fathom the idea of washing oneself with water at all, let alone every single day.

‘But how does it even get you clean?’ he demanded with utter bewilderment.

‘Very inefficiently, I’m afraid. It’s why they used so much of it… Look here,’ Prouvaire pointed at the label. ‘They called it a shower, and it became a bit of a ritual for them. By the 21st Century, it was so set in their culture that you weren’t allowed to take a shower without singing, because it was traditional. It crops up in a lot of different accounts, and there’s a bit of a disagreement about whether older people had to do it too.’

The boy blinked slowly, shook his head at such adult folly, and ran off to tell all his friends about the insane things their ancestors used to do. Watching him go with a smile, Prouvaire took Courfeyrac’s shoulder and steered them to the next exhibit, where the children were already congregating.

‘Right, talk.’

‘It’s Marius.’ A sigh rent the air. ‘Not that he’s giving me trouble, or anything!’ Courfeyrac hastened to add, a little wide-eyed.

‘I’d be a little surprised if he were… He’s a soft sort of kid, despite his big speeches. Not that he’s tried one of them recently. Though that may be Combeferre’s fault, mostly. I don’t think he’s been back at all since then, has he?’

Courfeyrac winced at the memory. ‘Yes well, that didn’t go so well for him, so he’s understandably spooked, though I may be talking him round to coming back. He did like you all, and he’s been hanging out with Bahorel and Bossuet. Law, y’know. Marius likes to pretend he doesn’t like his course as much as he actually does.’ They smiled, and suddenly Prouvaire thought he might understand the problem. He bit his tongue though, waiting for Courfeyrac to tell the story at their own pace.

‘Oh Jehan, I’m such an idiot!’ they exclaimed. ‘He just turned up at my door, and he’s got the wibbly eyes going, and the voice like he can’t bear to ask for help but also really _really_ needs it, and then just goes and fucking trips all over his words and it’s hilarious but also adorable. And you know how I love a good roommate, and Marius is an excellent roommate. He cleans up after himself, he’s quiet, he’s learning to cook without burning everything except mildly singeing one eyebrow -- which, incidentally, was fucking hilarious too -- and he also says the funniest things at the most unexpected times.’

‘And you’re in love with him.’

‘And I’m in love with him.’

‘So where’s the problem?’ Prouvaire prompted when Courfeyrac lapsed into silence, staring moodily at a series of photographs of the Last War. Young officers smiling for the camera in front of rows of missile-launchers that gleamed in the sun. News snaps of field hospitals -- the official ones bright and immaculate, and then the photojournalists’ memoirs of grime and agony. Shaky personal footage of distant explosions that tinged the sky with mud-brown and ochre.

‘The problem,’ they all but growled in response, ‘is _Ursula_.’

‘Ursula?’ It was his turn now to be baffled.

‘You probably don’t remember this, because it was maybe a day or so before the whole Combeferre Incident happened, but Marius spends quite a lot of time mooning over some girl. Ursula. Light of his life. He’ll surely die if he can’t have her, yadda yadda.’

‘Ah yes, I do remember.’ Marius had been quite giddy with happiness, and the others had been especially short with him. Only Grantaire had waxed lyrical about star-crossed lovers fated never to see each other again in this life. Marius had looked stricken at that, and Combeferre had despaired of getting anything done at all. No wonder Courfeyrac had not mentioned this to either of their closest friends. ‘Mystery Girl has a name now, then?’

‘So it would seem.’

Prouvaire wrapped an arm around Courfeyrac’s shoulder and pressed a kiss to their temple.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not as sorry as I am.’ There was no heat to it, no offence meant or taken.

They followed the children through to the next room, calling out admonishments about running  that were answered by a token slowing of the pace and a great deal of shoving. The exhibit was a full-scale model of a trench, and a field ambulance. A helpful sign informed visitors that its hover mechanism, designed to cope with the rocky terrains of the War’s many battlefields, was still operational and would be demonstrated twice a day. Shrieking happily, the entire class disappeared into the trench, to be located only by their whooping, which invariably began with a single voice before being relayed through each child to the waiting teachers.

‘I went in there when I was vetting the museum for them last week. I don’t know how they can sound so joyous, because I know for a fact that the curators have gone to great lengths to make that as realistic as they can.’ Prouvaire squeezed his eyes shut, his voice gone very faint. ‘They’ve also illustrated it at regular intervals with extracts from film and literature from the last couple of centuries. “Immersive experience” _and_ the accounts of others. You cannot fault their teaching methods,’ he added almost helplessly. ‘It’s a masterclass in all the worst realities of war. Listening to them, you’d never know that. For a deterrent plastered with reminders of Central’s role in ensuring this never happens again, it doesn’t seem to be deterring very many of them, does it?’

Courfeyrac shrugged. ‘They’re desensitised, I suppose. I know I was, by their age. It’s classic overkill, really.’

Prouvaire flinched at the choice of word, but a glance at his friend told him that pointing it out would be useless, as they had known very well what they were doing. Instead, he tightened his arm around their shoulders and felt the air go out of them like an old tyre.

‘How did you and Grantaire…?’ Courfeyrac piped up after a while, but trailed off with with a grimace.

‘I found the guts to tell him to his face that I wanted him.’

‘You make it sound so easy...’

‘It wasn’t.’ Still wasn’t, all these months later.

‘And how did that go?’

( _‘I’m grotesque.’_

_‘Since when has that bothered me?’_

The words changed but the tune never did.)

He shook himself free of the memory. ‘About as well as you’d expect.’

‘You were already living together by then, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. A matter of convenience. We both needed the extra allowance, and it was at the height of the space-sharing drive, so the incentives were pretty good. Easier to stay under the radar that way, too. A young teacher, everyone expects you to have someone at home. If you don’t, they start suggesting suitable candidates. If you keep refusing, they dig a little deeper. Couldn’t have that, of course...’

Courfeyrac nodded in understanding and Prouvaire did not elaborate. Revolution was not to be discussed in the shrine to Central’s achievements.

‘I should have seen it coming. In the end, convenience makes fools of us all. It’s the greatest Trojan Horse humanity has ever allowed within its walls.’ He grew quieter. ‘I was never supposed to love him.’

‘You’re good together though. He seems… better. And you’re happier too now, aren’t you?’

All they get in response is a wan smile.

‘Hey, at least there’s no Mystery Girl in the picture, right?’ Courfeyrac pressed with attempted optimism just as the soundtrack of the room looped back to the whistle-boom of falling bombs.

‘Right. Right.’

No girl. No mystery. The idea of gratitude was beyond him, its taste bitter on the back of Prouvaire’s tongue. There was that old line about the cud of vile, incurable sores. (Who would speak, though, for the innocence of his tongue?)

The setting, at least, would have been familiar to its author.

Sensing that they had blundered, Courfeyrac patted Prouvaire on the shoulder and dove into the trench in search of the intrepid young troublemakers, calling out to them as they went. In twos and threes, they came trooping back, a touch sullen at being brought to heel before their game was over, and a touch exhausted at having run so much and seen so little. Prouvaire chivvied them along and they went willingly enough to gawp at the cases of objects -- mostly fragments, and the occasional child’s toy, or gas-shrunk glove -- that had been recovered from the various battlefields of the world.

‘What would you advise me to do?’

( _Everything I didn’t do._ )

‘I mean, he’s gone for her. Completely and utterly gone for her. Writes her prose epics -- no idea whether he sends them… I’m a hopeless case, aren’t I? So what do I do?’

‘Either savour the misery -- and believe me, it can be exquisite -- or run, run like hell while you still can.’

‘You did neither.’ It sounded almost accusatory.

‘True. But my situation is rather different. For one thing, as you said, there is no mystery girl, no doe-eyed stranger to lead Grantaire astray.’ The words had to be forced from his throat, one by one, for each seemed a lie despite its perfect truth. ‘Just an old painter to whose disgraced name he occasionally raises a toast.’ And one other, who did not lead Grantaire astray so much as reel him in a near-mathematical orbit, more regular than any other habit he had ever had. He wondered sometimes whether Grantaire’s adoration for Enjolras should be the end of the two of them, whether he was a fool to think they could make anything of it. It must certainly seem so from the outside. One word from Enjolras, and Grantaire would be gone, either running to him or as far as he could from all the Amis. There was a degree of sick satisfaction to be had from the knowledge that the former was by far the more likely, but Prouvaire refused to give in to the temptation to wallow in its poison. To do so would be to grind into oblivion everything he and R had built for themselves, which was not inconsiderable. From the outside, he undoubtedly looked a fool, but appearances were meaningless when his R was as happy as he was capable of being.

‘Don’t settle, Courfeyrac.’ He had said it before he had had a chance to think it through, and regretted it at once. Still, he continued. ‘If he can’t have his Ursula, don’t let him have you unless he really means it. You deserve better than that.’

Courfeyrac’s eyes were wide and worried. ‘Do you mean that R --’

‘No!’ Prouvaire cut them off hastily. ‘No, no, nothing like that. I just know it can happen, and I don’t want that for you. You have too much to offer for anyone to accept it grudgingly.’

It was true, too. Grantaire _had_ meant it when he accepted Prouvaire’s lovesick advances. Meant it still. And it _was_ good, what they had. _Did_ make them better. But he could never mean it _enough_ to satisfy a heart that would glut itself on him to the point of sickness and beyond.

‘Thank you. Honestly though, if he offered, I don’t think I’d have the strength to refuse. And let’s not even talk about how Enjolras and Combeferre would react.’

‘I’m sure they’d--’

‘No really, let’s not.’

So they re-gathered the newly scattered class, one by one and devilishly uncooperative until they all stood moped by the old ambulance. Prouvaire performed a quick headcount while Courfeyrac told them the significance of everything they had just seen. It was hard to outdo Courfeyrac on history, and even the most disgruntled child began to look a little more pliant as they all listened to tales of all-too-avoidable horror. A few glanced back at the trench they had played in with unease, sensing dimly that they had done wrong by treating the reconstructed graveyard like they would the dusty court of the school.

Then it was time for the very last room. It detailed the last sixty years and the children therefore deemed it largely uninteresting: too recent to be exciting, and too remote to feel relevant. Dominating one wall was a life-size portrait of Thomas Hobbes, grimly standing guard over the display case that held a paper copy of _Leviathan_ , one of only six still in existence. The digital archives were, of course, extensive, but something thrilled in Prouvaire at the mere thought of paper books, no matter how repulsive their content. Emblazoned above the portrait were the words: _the state of nature is a condition of war, wherein the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short_. An inaccurate paraphrasing, perhaps, but even Combeferre, ever a stickler for detail, had been forced to admit that it served its purpose well enough. Had elegance ever been the sole condition for the justification of tyranny, Hobbes and his post-War disciples would have succeeded admirably.

‘Your face is nasty, brutish and short.’ The vindictive hiss from Courfeyrac tore Prouvaire from his musings, and he bit hard on his cheek to stifle his laughter.

‘Well it is! Look at him! Whiskery old bastard. I’m sure _some_ others would not have looked down with quite such glowering miens,’ they continued. Although various resistance movements over the years had been able to generate continued access to the works of Locke and Rousseau, none had thought it worth the risk to obtain portraits of those whose teachings contradicted Hobbe’s. There were, after all, far worthier targets than the promise of a photograph of an oil painting of some long-dead thinker.

‘Hush, Courfeyrac, or you’ll get us all into trouble. Our friends will forgive your indisposition, but we cannot risk indiscretion.’

Courfeyrac’s voice had been barely above a murmur, and Prouvaire’s was lower still. Under Hobbes’ watchful gaze, they pressed a brief hand to Prouvaire’s nape in apology.

‘Thomas Hobbes and Marius Pontmercy will be the death of me.’


	3. Chapter 3

‘A small winged creature of lore tells me that you had a playdate with Courfeyrac and your students today...’ Grantaire’s voice rang teasingly from where he lay under their table.

‘That bird was me, R.’

‘Touche. So, did they tell you all about their Marius problem?’ He popped out from under the furniture with a sly grin, making Prouvaire jump.

‘Since when have you known about this?’

‘I have an eye for detail, my dear. It has perhaps always been both my strongest suit and the leaf that fell on Siegfried’s shoulder. I know pining when I see it, and I’ve seen it for a while.’

_Is that why you never look in the mirror, Grantaire? At least Courfeyrac is self-aware._

‘Might I borrow that infamous eye of yours?’ He underlayed the playfulness of his tone with gun-metal and allowed his smile to turn a little feral. Gone was M. Prouvaire, pedagogue, and in his place stood Jehan who consorted with terrorists and knew three different ways to kill a man with the contents of his apartment.

Grantaire emerged completely and straightened himself out, a considering look on his face. His good humour had gained an edge at the request, an eagerness to please mixed with terror. Mistaking its source, Prouvaire sought to reassure him.

‘They’d never be able to trace it to you, I promise.’

That elicited a sharp sound that vaguely resembled mirth, as R’s face became more guarded still.

‘I’m not worried about my _safety_ , Prouvaire. Just name your terms.’

‘Ours is a world in which the Leviathan has been unchained, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

‘If this is going to be a philosophy lecture...’ Grantaire interrupted.

‘It’s not,’ Prouvaire returned, almost sharply, and R fell silent once more, suitably chastened. ‘We need it back in chains. And we need a visual of that. It came to me when we were at the museum earlier. That Hobbes portrait is everywhere, and there’s no counterpoint to it. That’s where you come in: you can craft the image that will kindle a revolution.’

‘I am not one of your merry band.’

‘But you _are_ our _friend_.’

‘I have no artistic merit.’

‘You had enough for Gros, and that is more than enough for me.’

‘I never finished my apprenticeship with him, and even if I had, what use would that be? The unremarkable student of a disgraced propagandist, whose work was deemed “unaligned with the popular mood”, and whom nobody knows anymore. I never paid attention anyway, I was too busy goofing off, and making trouble, and I’ve forgotten it all now. It’s been bleached clear out of my brain. I wouldn’t know what to do with a stylus if you pressed it into my hand this instant. There are people who can really, _really_ paint, Jehan. They never make it very far because our world has no use for that which is only beautiful, much as it needs the useless, but they’re glorious to watch anyway. Then there are the ones like Gros, who make it for a while, who are in fashion and receive a few great commissions before fading into unhappy obscurity. Let me tell you, Gros? Gros was not a happy man, when I knew him, which, when you think about it, explains rather a lot about how he and I came to be in any capacity. And then there are the ones like me, who never made it out from under the rock in the first place. And you know what? There are those whom rocks suit better than their own skin. Troglodytism can be extremely becoming and beneficial to the spirit.’

‘Grantaire! Enough! Can you, or can you not, paint something?’

‘I am capable of it.’

‘Will you do it?’ His tone grew soft once more and Grantaire crumpled in response.

‘I will do it. It’s a fool’s errand and will make not a whit of difference to your -- your precious nonsense, but I’ll do it. It’s not high art you require, after all… Even I can put a philosophy behind bars. The propagandist’s apprentice.’ Muttering still, he folded himself away once more, until he was hidden from view beneath the table.

Prouvaire ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and growled between his teeth. He was still wearing his outdoor gear, and he shed it, piece by laborious piece, as though the removing of it only increased the weight on his shoulders. He was determined they should not quarrell. Courfeyrac would not be there to see it, so he could tell himself it had nothing to do with proving a point. Their kitchen was as meagre as the next but he threw together handfuls of edibles into some semblance of a meal and brought the resultant plates out to the table.

Balancing the plates with awkward grace, Prouvaire settled himself on the floor and scooted until he too fit into the shadow of the furniture. Grantaire grinned up at him from where he lay, spread-eagle and twitching one bare foot to the tune in his head. He struggled into semi-uprightness, bumping his elbow on a table leg and cursing softly, before accepting the plate and thanking Prouvaire by briefly pressing his nose to his lover’s cheek.

‘I had to explain showers to a ten-year-old today,’ Prouvaire eventually remarked, swallowing down another largely flavourless mouthful.

‘I trust you went the whole hog?’

‘Oh yes. Ritual chanting and all. That’s the best part of the story!’

‘Such a shame academic consensus these days seems to be that it’s a myth, and that showering was no more formulaic than our current repast,’ Grantaire remarked wistfully. ‘The truth is terribly dull.’

Prouvaire hummed in agreement. ‘It still beats trying to tell them about the lottery.’

‘Ah yes, the perennial favourite. Listen up, kids,’ his voice grew into a parody of helpfulness that somehow held elements of Prouvaire, Combeferre and Enjolras. ‘About three months after your parents conceived you, you were randomly selected for survival at one of the tombolas our beautiful society holds four times a year. Having, through sheerest chance--’

‘Not chance, necessarily,’ Prouvaire interrupted, but was waved off immediately.

‘Whatever. By the sheerest chance-or-not, you made it. Congratulations. You are now entitled to your food and the air you breathe for as long as you are useful, with a grace period while you grow into an adult, because otherwise we’d never get anywhere, would we, children? So just be sure to be useful! And when you say goodbye to grandma, you’ll know why.’

Prouvaire hit him for that, but it was a swipe without any heat to it. ‘I hate it when you’re right.’

‘That’s the best thing about being right though!’ The answering grin was infectious, and the kiss pressed to his palm set beetles scurrying through Prouvaire’s innards. ‘Besides, I’m actually arguing your corner for once. Aren’t you proud of me?’

‘Desperately.’ (It came out too sincere.) ‘Now eat up. You’ll hurt my feelings if you let it go cold.’

Grantaire complied for a little while, until the words came bubbling forth again between mouthfuls.

‘So instead they got the wastefulness of the Old World, the War and the great peace in which Central shone triumphant and upheld the teachings of long-dead Englishmen? Enjolras would be furious.’

‘A little credit, R, if you please.’ He clutched a theatrical hand to his chest. ‘You entirely neglected to mention all my subtext. I tell them history is written by the victors, and the role of the victors is played by Central, who would dearly love to edit their part so that all they did was end an ongoing war. And I hint to them about the concept of a just war, fought not by states against one another -- which the world was right to abandon -- but by those silenced for too long against those who keep them gagged. I am an educator, Grantaire. I have responsibilities, and I do this as much for them as I do for Enjolras or any of the others.’

Grantaire hunched at the gentle rebuke. ‘And you think all of this will register with ten-year-olds?’

‘They’re smart. They’ll work it out. Besides, I’ll be there to help them along.’

‘And all this while wrangling Courfeyrac and their emotional drama...’

‘Practice makes perfect, my dear. And I’ve had plenty of practice.’

‘Ah, but you love me really.’ Unable to bear waiting for a reply, Grantaire fished himself out into the room, straightening with a series of clicks and the languid stretches of an old tomcat that knows how to fight.

Prouvaire gave him enough time to complete his escape before emerging and retrieving the tablet where he kept his lesson plans; tomorrow’s material needed reviewing. For a few seconds, he hesitated, casting appraising glances at his usual chair, before sinking to the floor and shuffling back under the table. It wasn’t a bad place to think, and sit, and a change of both scene and perspective might do him good.

Old World writers had taken to calling a mess of chair- and table-legs and support beams a ‘forest’. The whimsy of one writer, adopted and multiplied to ubiquity. It had become a cliche, too hackneyed to bear yet another outing. Prouvaire had never seen a forest. There were no trees in the city, and the city went on and on. What he would not give for a forest… He drifted into dreams of thick green and the cries of wildlife, the imagined rush of a brook and wondered whether the ground underfoot could really be as soft as it was said. Where gods met and hunted and gave not a whit for humanity. That, perhaps, was not so different now.

But arithmetic beckoned, so he wrenched himself back to lucidity. The children’s examinations should not be allowed to suffer for his own want of attentiveness, and the tests were approaching too soon to allow any slack.

Hours later, he powered down the tablet, having reviewed not only the plans for the entire week, but also drafted the geography teaching for the rest of the year. It had grown late and his lids were like sandpaper against his eyes every time he blinked. Groaning faintly as his too-cramped joints protested their long immobility, he levered his body upright -- narrowly avoiding scraping his back on the table-edge -- and made his way to his room.

The light was on in Grantaire’s room as he passed, and he stopped, perplexed. His repeated knocking received no answer, nor did calling R’s name. Worried, he tried the handle and found to his relief that it gave easily. What he found inside punched a soft surprised gasp out of him. Grantaire stood, his back to the door, his largest tablet set up on his easel, painting. Prouvaire could not glimpse more than a hint of sombre colours around Grantaire’s own frame, but there was no doubt in his mind as to the subject of the work.

Smiling, he withdrew, shutting the door with utmost care, and went to bed. He was long asleep when Grantaire joined him, sober but strangely giddy, but woke enough to reach for him and feel the smile Grantaire pressed into his chest when he turned gladly into Prouvaire’s arms.

In the morning, he disentangled himself from Grantaire’s sleeping form and crept into his room. The tablet still stood, enthroned in the centre of the floor, and at the flick of a switch it flickered to life to display an old man, with shoulder-length white hair, a moustache that emanated disapproval, and hard eyes, bound at the wrists. Behind him, a shadowy entity, vaguely human-formed but towering, was festooned with shining chains. Prouvaire swallowed hard, feeling oddly breathless at the image’s artistry and at the power of its message. With a flick of his wrist, he brought up the next picture, which was the same, but at the bottom of which, the words _LEVIATHAN AS INTENDED_ seemed to have been almost slashed into and through the colours.

From there, it took only a few sweeps of his fingers to save each of them -- knowing Grantaire’s passwords made it almost too easy -- and another few to transfer them to his own tablet. He would send them to the rest of the ABC later, but he wanted a few hours in which to comprehend their immensity first. The artist himself walked in, sleep-mussed and tight-jawed, just as he finished rescuing the paintings from their impending demise. Grantaire paused a few steps into the room.

‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

‘Making sure you can’t destroy these completely.’

Prouvaire turned in time to see Grantaire choke a little, before he mustered his anger to retort. ‘That’s not what I was going to do! And even if it had been, I made it, I’ve a right to destroy it again. That’s how it works.’

‘Please, R… Don’t do this… The light of day is a thief and a liar, and what you made is worth ten, twenty, a hundred rousing speeches and pamphlets.’

‘For god’s sake, can’t you see it’s worthless?’

The old argument, still sleep-mussed and dressed in yesterday’s clothes, wheeling itself out with damnable vigour. Prouvaire kept a secret file of three years’ worth of sketches, colour tests, small drawings, anything he had been able to save. There was no way of knowing how much more had been erased before he even discovered its existence. He would pay for it dearly were Grantaire to find the collection, because R would never be able to see it as more than some cruel joke. _Look at these, aren’t they hideous? Just as hideous as their progenitor. They should never have been born._

‘No, you’re not.’

A stunned silence followed, and for an awful moment, Prouvaire thought he had finally taken that step too far, chipped too hard at the chinks in Grantaire’s facade, and that their entire communal life was about to come tumbling down around him. He was already envisageing himself picking his way, battered and bloody, through the wreckage, searching for any sign of life, when Grantaire whimpered softly and launched himself at Prouvaire. They clung to each other mutely, and then R kissed him with bruising force.

‘How did I get so lucky?’ he asked breathlessly against Prouvaire’s collarbone when they finally broke apart. His nonchalance shook and his eyelashes felt suspiciously damp where they pressed against Prouvaire’s skin.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The slow spread of Combeferre’s smile as he took in each detail of Grantaire’s work was beautiful. He dissected it with the devotion of a parent until he had committed it to memory before passing the tablet to Courfeyrac, whose joyful exclamations set the beat to which Combeferre approached Grantaire. Unused to the full weight of Combeferre’s intensity, Grantaire shrank into his own shoulders, but bore the handshake in silence. He was unable to stifle a gasp, however, when Combeferre hugged him tightly and released him just as quickly.

‘It’s perfect. Thank you.’

Next, Courfeyrac twirled Grantaire theatrically and swept into a low bow. Then Feuilly and Bahorel caught him up between them to punch him cheerfully in the arms, laughing as they dodged his retaliatory swipes. Bossuet declared himself an expert in art by virtue of living with Musichetta, and pronounced the painting a masterpiece that would take the critics by storm if only it weren’t so very, very illegal. Joly merely nodded his agreement, thumping Bossuet on the back to stop him from choking on air in his excitement.

Grantaire glowed under their praise, even as he hunched ever further into himself, as though it could somehow create a shield between him and his friends’ exuberance. His eyes never stopped moving from one to the next, but returned, again and again, like magnets, to Enjolras, who had remained silent throughout. He still held Prouvaire’s tablet and was gazing fixedly at the painting. Only after the entire room had gone quiet did he realise that all awaited his verdict, and cleared his throat. Though he spoke loudly enough to address the entire room, he addressed Grantaire alone, watching him with the same intensity he had accorded _Leviathan in Chains_.

‘Thank you, Grantaire, for this service to our cause. It is exactly the symbol we need.’

‘It was Prouvaire’s idea...’ He seemed almost in an agony of self-effacement warring with perfect bliss.

‘But it was your execution, and for that, you have all our thanks.’

Enjolras’ smile was a benediction, but also signalled the end of the matter. The meeting moved on to discuss how best to hijack the billboards they would need to display the work, when to launch the operation so as to achieve the most impact without unacceptable risk, what they should write and say to go with it -- whether, indeed, they should say anything at all. Prouvaire was strongly opposed to diluting _Leviathan in Chains_ through distracting verbiage. The picture should be allowed to do its own talking, and the conversations it sparked to run their course, before Les Amis spoke about it. It would also make it easier for them to distance themselves from responsibility for such a treasonous act. Though treason itself held no trace of tabu in their minds, its consequences loomed and they agreed that it was too early to let themselves get caught.

‘Besides, Prouvaire is the only one among us who can claim to expertise in education,’ Combeferre added, and thus the matter was settled.

Throughout, Enjolras’ gaze flicked repeatedly to Grantaire, with a considering look on his face that had never been there before. It was, thought Prouvaire, the look of a man who always sought to see the best in people having his hopes rekindled in someone he had thought a lost cause. There was nothing acquisitive about it. And it terrified Prouvaire, because it carried near-infinite potential to harm Grantaire.

His spiralling thoughts were interrupted by Joly’s voice at his ear.

‘What did Gros do to him that screwed him over this badly?’

‘What do you mean?’ he hissed back, buying time and gauging the extent of Joly’s knowledge in order to pitch his reply.

‘Nobody should be that miserable when their friends like something they made.’

‘I don’t think you can pin it all on Gros -- some of it is pure R...’

Joly nodded sagely. He and Grantaire had been companions in merriment for a long time, and he knew more than most just how deep his friend’s melancholy ran.

‘But,’ continued Prouvaire, voice grim, ‘Gros sure didn’t help. The perfect storm of respected artist, teacher, sort-of friend, mentor, occasional fuck, staggeringly needy and emotionally unavailable.’

‘Shit.’

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself. And Joly? I know he’s not _your_ patient, but I am invoking doctor-patient confidentiality on this anyway.’

‘Of course.’ He would tell Bossuet, that much was plain, but though he was a terrible gossip who enjoyed few things more than a good yarn, he had taken his Oaths and his studies seriously. He would not breathe a word of this to anyone.

Enjolras called the meeting to order, drawing the various threads of discussion to himself to unite them, then ceded the floor to Combeferre with a warm sweep of his hand.

‘This is where we stand as of right now: Feuilly knows someone who can get us access to all the billboards down at the distribution centres, and most of the ones in the surrounding residential areas. That’s where we debut the work. Bahorel, your friends will then take over circulating it through the rest of the city, using their more developed network. By then, the authorities will be on maximum alert if they haven’t shut the operation down already. I need hardly remind you of what this means for your own secrecy. You need to seem harmless and beyond suspicion until people have digested Grantaire’s work.’ Combeferre cast especially significant glances at Bahorel, Courfeyrac and Enjolras, who had the most difficulty biting their tongues in the face of facts or opinions they could not countenance.

His audience all nodded solemnly, all too aware of both the risks and the rumours regarding the fates of dissidents. The three particular targets shifted uncomfortably in their seats, brought up short by Combeferre’s ability to deliver admonishments and the direst of warnings in a most alarmingly pleasant tone.

‘We also need to make sure we time our own response right,’ Courfeyrac picked up. ‘Leave it too long, and well lose momentum, and Grantaire’s genius will have been in vain.’

‘Exactly.’ Enjolras did not rise, but his back straightened under the room’s attention. ‘If we speak too soon, we will overpower the people’s own developing sense of self, which we should be nurturing, not smothering. But that popular consciousness, once achieved will fizzle and die if we’re not careful. And remember that Central will be fighting us every step of the way. Even with repeated hacking -- if Feuilly’s contact can get us that much -- we will have a few days at most in which to display Leviathan in Chains. For every conversation about it, there will be three others that were suppressed, another three too ready to believe the propaganda, and three who are simply too afraid to raise their faces and say ‘no’ to the boot that crushes them. All we have the moment is an opportunity, and we _must_ seize it.’

And seize it they did.

Their strengths and personalities clicked into place with unexpected elegance, showing a fluidity of coordination atypical of untrained schoolboys, no matter how good their intentions. Feuilly’s hacker friend -- a paranoid middle-aged woman who referred to herself as the spider so often that none of them could decide whether she was joking -- ordered them to give her a week, then delivered in three days.

‘All of the planted files will go live at 6pm tomorrow,’ she explained to Feuilly. ‘I’ve put them behind multiple barriers -- shields, if you will -- so they should be harder for Central to bring down. They’re also timed to reset at random intervals, which should allow you a little more time because anything that gets pasted on top of them without removing the file itself will simply be stripped away. The resets aren’t synchronised across billboards, so it’ll be harder for Central to predict and counter.’

Enjolras looked prepared to fall at her feet in gratitude, but she declined all his offers of compensation, instead insisting that the biggest service they could do her would be to leave and make sure their footsteps would never be traced to her door.

Next, Les Amis were tasked with discreet patrolling in shifts, engineered to look like plausibly circuitous routes to their places of work, study and leisure. They could not be out more frequently than before, or suddenly adopt new patterns of behaviour, nor could they congregate in too large groups. Bahorel proved invaluable: his habitual wanderings and erratic schedule, crafted to miss as many classes as he could, gave him the perfect cover to check on numerous billboards and public places without doing anything unexpected that would draw official attention like a spotlight. Prouvaire, on the other hand, felt near-useless. He was a teacher, with fixed hours, catching the same Sub nearly every morning, trapped in classrooms where he could glean little of value (‘but you impart value, and that is worth so much more!’ was Combeferre’s rejoinder when he expressed his frustration), and going home to his supposed husband every evening.

When Courfeyrac demanded Grantaire distract them from the contents of their apartment, and dragged him along for the ride, Prouvaire nearly wept with joy.

Grantaire too needed little encouragement, barely heeding Courfeyrac’s persuasive voice telling him that he always knew the best places for everything, even in the direst of times, so busy was he putting on his outdoor gear. Even the knowledge that their true purpose was to ensure that they were still a step ahead of Central did not seem to deflate him.

There was an art to adopting the mien of a flaneur and the watchful gaze of a lawyer, but Bahorel had taught them well. The warehouse district was hardly scenic, but then, the town had not been planned with scenery in mind, so those with the itch to wander made do with what they had.

Grantaire led them first to the forecourt of an oil depot, where a set of steps led to a bunker of sorts. They had all been there before, having sometimes used it as a meeting-place, and it was a favourite of Prouvaire’s. Old World-style lights had been tapped into the grid and bathed the cement-walled bar in an orange glow. Their evocative shine was the root of his affection for the place, and he smiled at them as old friends and co-conspirators as they entered. There was little to eat on offer, and all well beyond the price-range of most patrons, but bottles of pills huddled for space on the shelves. Most were well on their way to emptiness, and the two women holding the fort nodded familiarly at the party.

‘Just passing through today,’ Grantaire called cheerfully, waving one of them off as she reached for a green bottle.

He steered Courfeyrac and Prouvaire towards a door near the back that both had previously overlooked. It opened onto a passageway, lit only by regular holes in its ceiling that also explained the dust and sand that unevenly covered the uneven floor.

‘If you want genuine entertainment, my friend,’ Grantaire grandly informed Courfeyrac, ‘you must leave behind those who are reputable among the disreputable, and seek out the truly infamous. I shall play Virgil, while you and Prouvaire must share the role of the distressed poet.’

‘And tell me, Virgil of the new age, how do you know about infamy?’ Courfeyrac replied, laughing.

‘Ah but by first-hand experience, of course. First-hand experience and many years of knowing every exit from each of my haunts.’ He paused to smile, a wicked quirk of lips and teeth. ‘And every entrance.’

As he spoke, Grantaire theatrically slid open a metal door that rolled into the wall with a clang. Voices assailed their ears, the din of a busy and familiar clientele that did not so much as glance up at the new arrivals. Courfeyrac was not granted the time to ponder the strangeness of such a casual attitude among those engaged in such risky behaviour. Grantaire had already grabbed their sleeve and dragged them to the bar. Words and money changed hands, and then a slice of cake -- real cake -- was set before them.

‘I’d have got three, but this is the last one,’ Grantaire said. ‘Thus Fate saves me from my intended profligacy.’

‘It is too much already --’ Courfeyrac began.

‘-- and none of us can be very hungry right now. Had you got three, two would have been wasted,’ Prouvaire finished with a smile. ‘You should do the honours and begin.’

‘Ah but it is Courfeyrac’s honour in which it was bought!’ Grantaire protested without heat.

Courfeyrac grinned and took a bite. ‘Very well then.’

Honours done, all three savoured each mouthful, chasing the taste of fruits they had almost forgotten, so scarce had they become. Even the black market only rarely offered any, making the cake a gem in the underworld, highly illegal and utterly delicious. They barely talked, too intent on bliss, though Grantaire also signalled across the bar for two alcohol pills from a bottle matching that in their previous locale. Only once each crumb had been consumed with expressions of transported ecstasy did the conversation resume.

‘So what’s with the entrances and exits anyway?’ Courfeyrac asked. ‘Are you a master thief we should know about? Because it would be _criminal_ ’ (they winked demonstratively) ‘to have let such talent go to waste.’

‘I am not,’ Grantaire laughed, ‘though I’d doubtless have a job somewhere down here if I were. No, it’s far more prosaic than that, I’m afraid. I never really got the hang of school. I was bright, sure, but I couldn’t sit still for long enough, and there was too much focus on mathematics anyway. Numbers.’ He shuddered demonstratively. ‘Entirely too many numbers, and my utter lack of ability with them made me none too popular in certain quarters. So I eventually figured that if I wasn’t going to get anything out of class, I might as well get myself out. I snuck out all the time to go roaming the city -- speaking of which, come, my friends, let us arise and go now, for there is much still to see and to do.’

So saying, he led his companions out through what might have been called a front door in a more legitimate establishment. They emerged, blinking against the smog that was always worst in this part of town, downwind from the factories, the industrial yards and the air docks. Nobody from Central ever made more than a token promise to address the situation. Who cared? It was just warehouses, and workers who slept elsewhere anyway, the filthy attic it was best to ignore most of the time, but in whose underbelly they served cake that tasted of summers in the Old World.

‘Where are you taking us next, Virgil?’ Prouvaire inquired to stop up his own musings, casting about him and noting that the billboard two corners down still showed the livid colours of _Leviathan in Chains_. The hurrying passers-by did not stop before it, no doubt for fear of arousing suspicion. Enjolras would be displeased by this: what were the odds that workers too afraid to stand still in the street would stand and fight when called upon? He made a mental note to report back, though Courfeyrac would undoubtedly do the same and beat him to it. But he would report too that, though they did not stop, the passers’ steps slowed and they stared as they continued on their way.

‘Another den of vice, my dear,’ came the reply, and Prouvaire looked back at R, the very image of nonchalance, not a traitor observing the progress of his treason. Seeing the direction of Prouvaire’s gaze, Grantaire wrapped an arm around each of his friends and altered their course so that it would lead past the billboard. Riding the surge of emotion in his chest, Prouvaire leant into him and buried his hand in Grantaire’s hair. Seeing the thoughtfulness Grantaire always hid with artlessness had been the beginning of the end for his poor poet’s heart.

‘Keep up, my friends!’ Grantaire sing-songed as he led them just close enough to the defaced billboard to hear angry murmurs pass between those who loitered at its feet, though not to make out what they were saying. ‘I was telling you a story, was I not? As I was saying, school and I did not get along -- sorry Jehan, I’m sure it would have been different had you been my teacher. And as you know, every principal is but their school personified -- the Central-sent spirit of the school wearing a human face to decorate its monstrosity. Death, dressed for the ball. Now, you can imagine that he and I were not the closest of friends. Each week, I would devise a new multitude of escape routes, each more improbable than the last. Each would serve me well for a couple of glorious escapades, then I would be discovered, or ratted out, or simply get careless or cocky -- people tend to do that, don’t they? Almost like they want to be caught. And so he, in turn, would block off another route, and so the game continued. Soon enough, I was vaulting a roof just in order to avoid trigonometry.’

Courfeyrac was laughing heartily by this point, their woes stemming from life and one M. Pontmercy temporarily set aside, and they radiated warmth. Prouvaire basked cat-like in their joint loveliness and thanked whatever spirit had watched over him. Small mercies made all the more precious by a merciless world. Small, but so very, very bright.

‘But our plucky hero could not escape forever. Soon enough -- too soon, tragically so -- fate caught up with him and the austere face of authority loomed over his childish innocence.’ Grantaire grew very grave, his brows comically drawn together and his jaw sorrowful. ‘The final escape route, too cunning to relate in the time we have, was blocked from him. So what did this enterprising lad do? He sought revenge, of course -- this way, through here, mind your heads -- Bahorel nearly brained himself on this archway last time I brought him. You should have heard Bossuet: he laughed and laughed. Kept saying that for once it wasn’t him with the bad luck. Anyway, revenge. This was a good while ago now, so it was before they phased out the personal bugs. The head used to take his in to the school every morning, as you would, and park it near the entrance to the admin building. He did this every single day. Here’s some advice, my friends: if you have a persistent adversary, never make the mistake of developing a pattern. Predictability can be smelled a mile off. So one day, dear old Mr Principal, Sir parked his bug, same as every other day. And when he got back from his lunch, he discovered that it was no longer where he thought he had left it.’ Grantaire paused for dramatic effect, and his audience leant in, hanging on his every word and breathless with mirth.

‘No. In his usual parking space sat an antique desk -- a family heirloom or something, _highly_ irregular, of course, very shiny. Old World. You’d have loved it, Jehan. And in his office, where his desk had sat, lovingly dissassmbled then reassembled by yours truly, sat the faithful little bug. He was _apoplectic_ with rage. Because of course the damn thing wouldn’t fit back out the door of the office! He had to get in a mechanic to take it apart again, and I’m sure it never ran as well again, because it made these funny little coughing sounds from that day on. For the record, those sounds? The mechanic’s fault, not mine. I made sure it was _perfect_ when I left it as the centrepiece for my tasteful arrangement of the school’s paperwork.’

Courfeyrac chortled happily, and Prouvaire walked on air to see Grantaire so carefree. Then they passed through another doorway, and suddenly everything was noise and half-darkness and the sound of repeated impacts and the occasional sickening crack.

‘Where are we?’ Courfeyrac asked, startled by the change.

‘The ninth circle. Or as close as it’s possible to be while remaining on this side of the them-us divide with Central.’

Grantaire pushed their way through the mass of bodies, and awareness dawned on Prouvaire. That Grantaire fought was no secret. _Where_ he fought had been a mystery up until this point. The city was supposedly riddled with these illicit venues, where those in need of an outlet, or just bloodthirsty, could watch and fight and bet. Their backers were equal parts organised criminals and the bored and rich who were not meant to exist -- for how could anyone be rich in a society as egalitarian as theirs? Or bored when all labour was required just to eke out subsistence for mankind from the barren face of the planet? But fights wasted food-energy and water, so their continued operation relied on the generous support of those with access to the darkest sources to raw materials.

That cake had been a product of the black market was worrying, yes, but not in an urgent way. Not while mass stockpiling by a select few _eminences grises_ was evidenced by the fight circles they kept afloat. Those who took part were not to blame, though they were to an extent complicit. No, they did what they could and what they had to. To blame were the parasites, Central’s pay- and puppet-masters, who sat on precious resources and manipulated the survival lottery.

These were the ones Les Amis truly fought against.

They did not stay for long. They had seen enough.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Prouvaire had come in search of Bossuet on an errand from Joly, who was too tied down on the wards to be able to deliver his message himself. Instead, however, he ran into none other than Marius Pontmercy, lately of Courfeyrac’s tears and heart-wrung sighs. Or, more accurately, Marius Pontmercy ran headlong into him. Catching the aspiring lawyer by the shoulders, Prouvaire steadied him and braced himself for the barrage of apologies and self-directed laughter that usually seemed to follow Marius’ mishaps. When these were not forthcoming, he took a closer look and found that Marius’ eyes were wide and his breath short.

‘What is the matter? Do you need a doctor?’

‘No, no, I’m in perfect health, thank you. I just… I. Look. I need to talk to… Well, you, for example. Any of you. But not here.’

‘Marius, get a grip,’ Prouvaire admonished, the warmth of his concern taking the sting out of his tone. ‘If you think there’s something wrong, try to look a little less guilty.’

‘Sorry. Care to accompany me to the Archives? I was in there the other day for… Well, I got curious about something Combeferre mentioned… Anyway, it doesn’t matter. While I was there, I found something else that I thought you might like. I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you.’

Throughout, he had collected himself so that he was once more in control of all his limbs, and his gaze had lost its manic sheen. By the time he took Prouvaire’s elbow and began to lead him along the road, he was quite himself once more, chattering amiably about his studies, about Bossuet’s latest exploits (he apparently risked being cast right back out of class, having only just gained readmittance after standing up to Blondeau over the old coot’s roll-calling habits), about Courfeyrac’s jokes, and about the mysterious Ursula.

‘I don’t want everyone assuming she’s all I can think of,’ he said, frowning. ‘I know Combeferre gets very impatient with me, and I understand why, I really do and I don’t hold it against him at all. I say such silly things sometimes, and I wish I didn’t. But you, Prouvaire, I feel you will not laugh at me for saying I am in love.’

‘Of course not. Love is the greatest gift humanity has ever received, bestowed, treasured and squandered.’

‘Exactly!’ Marius seemed almost ecstatic to find so receptive an audience, and Prouvaire pitied Courfeyrac, who bore the brunt of this enthusiasm. To hear endless tales of love and perfection and praises for someone else… It must be testing their sweetness to its limits. Marius seemed on the verge of continuing, but brought himself up short, perhaps remembering too clearly what had happened when he had last allowed himself to be carried away by his opinions in the company of one of Les Amis. Though it had been Combeferre to deal the killing blow, none of those in attendance had made particular efforts to stay his hand.

They reached the Archives, where Marius swiped a card and ushered Prouvaire inside.

‘There are materials here that I need for one of my classes,,’ he said almost apologetically, waving the card in a vague motion.

He led the way down corridors, between databanks, and desks, and filing systems incomprehensible to most minds, and paper -- paper! -- copies of everything that had been salvaged after the War. Finally, he turned a corner and stopped beneath an unremarkable wall-mounted light, indistinguishable from those to the right and left.

‘We’re in a blind spot between cameras. I found by accident a while back because there’s a librarian I’m sort of friends with who gave me a tour of the office and I noticed there was a gap when I looked at the screens. And I know that the sound monitoring equipment is broken, because an engineer was cursing about it this morning and saying they’d not be able to get it fixed before tomorrow. As long as we’re quick, nobody will question our disappearance from the feeds.’

Prouvaire looked the boy up and down with newfound respect and made a mental note to apologise to him at some point for any instances when he might have been uncharitable towards him.

‘I’m being followed,’ Marius said. ‘I was looking for Ursula -- we spoke the other day! Just a hello, but she was so kind. She said she comes this particular way often, so I hoped I might bump into her again -- and I could feel… Well, like someone had emptied a bag of insulation gel down the back of my collar. There was definitely someone following me, and I’m sure there have been other times too when I was being watched. I don’t know whether this has anything to do with you, but I don’t like it one bit, and I thought you and the others ought to know. I meant to tell Bossuet today, but I never got the chance, so I’m really glad I ran into you.’

As he said those last words, he steered Prouvaire further along the corridor, and his voice became light and vivacious once more, as though the conversation had been lighthearted all along. He gestured volubly. ‘-- see, it’s an old book of fairy tales,’ he was saying, ‘with beautiful illustrations, and I know you love all that Old World stuff, and it’s got just a touch of the morbid, and, well, you’ll see in a minute.’

He maintained this stream of chatter until they arrived before a small glass door, where Marius swiped his card again, then keyed in an access code. The door swung noiselessly open, admitting the pair into a darkened room dominated by drawer units, each of which was meticulously labelled and no doubt cross-referenced with the rest of the Archive. Moving with ease, Marius selected the correct drawer and slid it open, beckoning Prouvaire forward.

Doing as he was bidden, Prouvaire peered into the drawer and let out a soft gasp. The book was indeed very beautiful. He could not appreciate it fully however -- too occupied with digesting the information he had just received. Belatedly, he realised that Marius’ talkativeness had been a cover for his own silence, and that the book was simply another explanation for being dumb-struck that had no scent of the illegal clinging to its pages.

‘Thank you for showing me this, Marius. It’s beautiful, and -- I… Thank you. I really appreciate it,’ he said eventually, tearing himself away from the book’s pages.

Prouvaire attempted to order his thoughts. One the one hand, Marius had always had something of a startled colt about him, so it was entirely possible that he had imagined the entire episode. Equally, it might have been that other girl Courfeyrac had mentioned, whose parents had twisted her to the point where she fastened onto Marius like a lifeline. It might even have been Bossuet, who had repeatedly proved himself quite shameless in his quests for information, and who was dying to know more about Ursula. It might be nothing -- the fever-dream of a young man who spent too much time haunting the footsteps of a girl he had never met.

At any other time, Prouvaire might well have accepted any of these explanations and dismissed Marius’ fears from serious consideration. He’d have thought it charming, no more.

On the other hand, on the eve of changing the world, no intuition, instinct, hunch or passing shiver was too unremarkable. They all flirted with discovery on a daily basis, and tailing Marius was the obvious choice for anyone who wanted to corner Courfeyrac, the heart of their operation. Besides, he knew a little of Marius’ history, and anyone who had survived years under Gillenormand’s roof could not be easily spooked.

‘Good.’ Marius smiled awkwardly. ‘I should be getting home now -- Courfeyrac worries if I’m late, though I keep telling them I’m perfectly capable of looking out for myself. Please don’t think I’m complaining though. They’re the best friend I could ever have wished for, and I’m so very grateful for -- well, everything.’ He cut himself off with an embarrassed hand pressed to his mouth, but his eyes were still sparking with warmth. Poor Courfeyrac… They had never stood a chance. ‘I’ll walk you out?’

The two of them parted at the Archive’s front entrance, and Prouvaire turned his footsteps towards home. It wasn’t far to go, he would walk.

As he set off, Marius’ turn of phrase came back to him unbidden: insulation gel down the back of his collar, right where the protrusions of his spine marked the beginning of his neck. He sped up his steps a little, half-convinced he was simply becoming paranoid and suggestible, but it seemed to him that there might have been something to Marius’ fears. He could see nobody, and to turn and check for pursuers would be fruitless -- they would never be that clumsy -- and itself deeply suspicious. _If you are doing no wrong, then you have nothing to fear_. And by extension: _if you think you are being watched, you must be doing something that warrants scrutiny_.

The mild-mannered young teacher surely had nothing to fear. He was respectable. Job, regular hours, Grantaire, friendly hellos on the landing in the morning, the trappings of a harmless existence. Nothing to give away the man who would burn down Central and raise its people if they only gave him enough toluene.

He was being overly dramatic, allowing others’ fears to cloud his judgment. The times called for caution -- extreme caution -- but never panic. Bahorel had warned them that the webs around all dissidents were tightening, that more and more people were being disappeared, that a young woman had been seized in broad daylight for calling on fellow pedestrians to _think_ and that nobody knew whether the figure hustling her into an alley had been a rescuer or a Central agent. It would be wise to cultivate his air of benevolent banality to throw off whatever suspicious neighbours might haunt the crevices of his building. It would be blind foolishness to assume that any of them knew.

He breathed deep through the filters of his scarf, and the familiarity of its weave against his skin helped ground him. He slowed his pace once more, looked up at the sky. It was tinged with blue, very high and very pale, and Prouvaire let the tightness of his worry loosen and expand so that it stretched paper-thin to match the sky. Became diaphanous.

It all snapped back to cling to him when he walked through the door of his apartment to find a note on the hallway floor. It was Combeferre’s handwriting, and merely said: _they got Mabeuf_.


	6. Chapter 6

‘I’ve run the numbers we pulled from the Server last month again and Enjolras is right. The survival lottery is definitely operating above necessary levels.’

Joly’s voice was weary, and the deep circles under his eyes betrayed the time ‘running the numbers’ really took. The room was hushed as each member of the group digested the enormity of this knowledge. Prouvaire felt he might be sick. It had been one thing to suspect. They could feed -- no, no, wrong word! -- _build_ on that, use it and be abstractly horrified by using terms of trust, and betrayal, and social contract. Now, they _knew_ , and it was infinitely worse -- perhaps more than he could bear.

‘And yet nobody is receiving the increased rations that should entail.’ It was Combeferre who broke the silence, voice flattened and atonal with the effort of not breaking.

‘It’s worse than that, even,’ Feuilly too sounded deadened, almost muffled. (Prouvaire wondered whether perhaps his own hearing was at fault.) ‘There’s talk down by the tracks that there are more cuts coming.’

‘We can use that talk and that anger.’ It was the first time all evening that Enjolras had addressed the group as a whole. ‘The situation is untenable, and it won’t be long before the city goes up in flames of its own accord. It will stand with us in the face of such gross tyranny, all it needs is a spark. Bahorel, what of our other friends?’

‘I’ll talk to my contacts this week, but my feeling is that they are thinking very much along the same lines.’

Enjolras’ smile was the revelation it always was for it radiated purpose. It was Enjolras’ gift not to rise above the quagmire, but to lift it with him to the light. Prouvaire espied Grantaire throwing back another handful of pills, transfixed by their leader and the look of a martyr in ecstasy on his face. He would be especially low tonight. A fine pair they would make.

But first, there were the bones of plans, laid out in dark pigments and splashed across the city, to flesh out and memorise. A room of anxious frowns and the laughter of youth in a heady cocktail. Possibility spread its wings in Jean Prouvaire, rising from the rubble and the facelessness of Central Admin and the ever-present dust.

‘You’ll all get yourselves killed,’ Grantaire stated later that night, his gaze flickering from point to point, anywhere but Prouvaire. He was clearly trying for matter-of-fact and missing by miles. Instead, he sounded like overtaught silk, his fibres creaking in protest at their mistreatment. Prouvaire wondered how long it would be before he tore apart completely.

‘It’s the right thing to do,’ he answered and softly kissed Grantaire’s bitten lips.

Neither could bring himself to lie by disagreeing with the other.

Grantaire wrenched himself away with a noise that resolutely refused to be a sob. Prouvaire did not follow, and when he went to dress for bed, he found R’s door closed against him.

The morning was no better, and when he left the flat and immediately came face to face with his kindly neighbour, he could only guess at his countenance from her reaction. She clucked at him, pressing his shoulder and murmuring soothing nonsense about the pain of marital trouble and how it would all blow over, Jean, you just wait and see. He nodded along to the useful pretence, and her fresh grief at a child that would never be, lost to the lottery, compelled him to offer her what little distraction he could.

‘You should drop by sometime,’ she insisted. ‘I hardly see you these days, always running off to your friends or your students.’

All thoughts of closed doors and rifts vanished in a blare of warning sirens. Curse the inherent ambiguity of the word ‘students’. Whom did she mean? Did she know? Could she suspect? There was no love in her heart for Central, but the risks were too great to take that chance. They’d be killed in their sleep, put down like dogs, his beautiful friends and anyone who had ever associated with them. Even the Hucheloups at the shop. It would have been disastrous a week ago. Now, with Central baying for the blood of anyone on whom they could pin _Leviathan in Chains_ , it would be world-ending. It could even have been she, with sympathetic smile and easy chatter, who had made a report of her thoughts. The eyes he felt on his back since his day at the Archive with Marius might be her doing.

He smiled and it felt like the daybreak in winter, pale and hard-won.

‘We would love to.’

‘Wonderful! How’s Thursday? Only the rest of the week’s no good for us, see, because the husband’s been taking on extra shifts.’

‘Thursday,’ he echoed with more bewilderment than the word perhaps warranted.

Pleased, she patted his cheek and ushered him along his way, reminding him of the Sub’s predicted delays and gently chiding tardiness, all the while reassuring him that he was a good boy who was no doubt never late, but he wouldn’t want to set a bad precedent today, now would he? It’s so easy for these bad habits to creep in you know, dear.

She would have made a wonderful mother.

Thursday afternoon found them perched in her front room, nibbling on stale biscuits clearly saved for a different occasion. Grantaire was still sullen, barely meeting Prouvaire’s eye and speaking only when addressed directly and then prompted with a sharp nudge. He was sober -- at Prouvaire’s urging -- which might have been part of the problem. Still low from their last meeting, he had especially resented the entreaty to lay off the pills just for the evening. Their hostess prattled as her demeanor gradually slipped further and further from well-practised happiness, hoping perhaps that sheer effort of will and constant noise might rescue the whole affair.

‘And you must bring your friends around, sometime. Such nice young people,’ she threw out with an air of near-desperation.

‘They’re all terribly busy with their studies --’

‘-- of course! I quite understand! Bright young people like that are the future, aren’t they, dear?’

‘-- looks like they have plenty of time to loaf about to me… What? Oh yes, sure, future. Yeah,’ the husband supplied with a grimace.

‘What was it you said they studied?’

‘Law, medicine and admin, mostly.’ He felt like he was being smothered, pressed into pillows too huge and soft and menacing to comprehend, enveloped by the faint scents of bleach and grief. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, was achieving none of what this little farce had been about, and Grantaire was of no use at all, and the wheels were spinning too fast for him because the Sub had rattled his brain until it came loose from his skull and now it was crumbling like the biscuit in his hand.

‘Admin?’ She could not suppress a wince and Prouvaire was nauseatingly grateful for its ability to jolt him back into his own thoughts. ‘Good professions, all of them, and such good kids. I thought I might study myself, actually -- I was bright in school. But none of the approved subjects ever really appealed, and then I met this one,’ she nudged him playfully, and for a moment his face shed its glower to smile at her and he seemed young again, ‘and then I felt too old for it. Like I’d missed my chance.’

‘Waste of time, if you ask me,’ Grantaire piped up. ‘See, they only teach you this very narrow range of stuff -- but then you knew that. Except it actually goes deeper than you knew, because even in that range, they only teach you a narrow range. They’ll prepare you for their world and not teach you anything that’s actually worth knowing, as a human being. I’d like to think sometimes it’s why we’re all so rotten inside, but then again, that’s mostly self-delusion, because I’m actually pretty convinced we were rotten anyway, even when things like literature and music were considered a valid subject for three or four years of study. I suppose in a way we deserve the intellectual stultification we receive. My own ignorance is proof enough, I think, though it also precludes me from the lofty privilege of having an opinion.’

‘If your friends enjoy it, though, then surely it has to be worth something?’

Grantaire responded to this new heroic attempt to salvage the conversation with an inelegant snort which encompassed both his pronouncement on the genuineness of that enjoyment, and a judgment as to its value if it were indeed genuine.

‘So they’re wasting their time, then?’ The husband had grown steadily more interested throughout Grantaire’s spiel, and Prouvaire suspected that this might be an old bone of contention between himself and his wife. That his grunted scepticism had had no traction with her until the lottery outcome had shaken her fragile faith in Central. That now, perhaps, he thought he might convince her at last, and that although neither would be happier for it, there would be resentful satisfaction for him.

Grantaire, magnificently oblivious -- or magnificently feigning obliviousnessness, it was always hard to tell with him -- barked an ugly laugh. ‘In every possible way.’

‘What _ever_ do you mean by that?’ their hostess cried.

Prouvaire’s eyes were wide at the danger. He trusted Grantaire with his life. They all did -- of course they did -- but these were the very treacherous sands he had sought to avoid in agreeing to an afternoon of meaningless chatter and bland neighbourliness. Just that friendly couple from next door. Such sweet boys, and so helpful when an extra pair of hands was needed. Well-spoken, quiet. One a teacher. Not sure about the other, but _such_ a gentle nature. Half-lies and grey truths to keep that one terrible word at bay: _treason_. It howled at the gate and he trembled to hear it so soon, before they were ready, because for all Enjolras’ talk, their time had not yet come.

‘Nothing, nothing at all. Please ignore me.’ Grantaire smiled and waved a dismissive hand. ‘The jealousy of an ex-student who never made it, that’s all.’

She settled once more, mollified but still suspicious. Her husband, however, would not let it rest. He sensed his new-found, long-awaited ally slipping from his grasp and strove to provoke a further outburst, if only for some company in his bitterness.

‘You must have meant something though!’ he insisted mulishly. ‘I mean, you just said, you _were_ a student, so that gives you a basis for having an opinion.’

‘Truly, it was nothing. I’m sorry.’ Grantaire’s smile grew thinner, but his voice never lost its lightness. ‘I should not have spoken at all. I am privileged to know such wonderful people and to call them my friends, and I could not speak ill of them if I tried.’ There was a comforting finality nestled in the warmth of his tone, a low hum of certainty and affection that stemmed all doubt in his listeners. Prouvaire breathed easier and accepted another biscuit with a gracious smile and a tentative offer of reciprocal hospitality.

(It would have made Enjolras proud to hear such conviction from Grantaire. If he had ever listened.)

They talked of the weather, of an imminent concert that had the columnists in conniptions, of the municipal plans for new SubTram cars to replace the oldest parts of the line. The husband declared loudly that, in his professional opinion, it wouldn’t actually happen until someone had an accident, and even then… No, not until the things fell apart completely. Prouvaire offered a comment about how his commute seemed serviceable enough, noise aside. Hmmm yes, well the sound engineers had been awful slackers back in the day came the rejoinder. Always off chasing girls instead of figuring out how to keep the damn transport system at decibel levels fit for human ears. His team had been far better, of course. Of course, of course, everyone chorused with a smile.

The sun had vanished into the haze just after noon, but even through the particle-dense air, the angle of its beams dipped and changed, exhausted and almost sulphurously yellow.

Prouvaire stretched his legs with a creak. ‘We really must be going, I’m afraid. Thank you so much for the invitation -- it’s been lovely.’

Everyone rose as in slow-motion through the half-light and the dust-motes. Their cheeks were patted again and kissed, their hands shaken. They refused a final biscuit apiece. ‘Next time,’ Grantaire promised like Sheherazade. ‘Next time.’


	7. Chapter 7

Feuilly let out a wordless growl of frustration and slammed the borrowed and thrice-encrypted tablet down.

‘It’s the end of the line,’ he told the hovering Amis, who sagged in unison.

His hacker-friend had been peerless in delivering upload after upload of _Leviathan in Chains_ , ensuring them nearly a week of patchy but extensive exposure. Now, Central had finally got the best of them and shut whatever backdoor their spider had had into their systems.

‘The lock-out’s solid, and if she probes any further, they’ll find first her, then us,’ Feuilly continued. ‘Honestly, if she were any less brilliant, I’d wager they had agents on their way to her already.’

Bahorel clapped a hand to Feuilly's shoulder as they accorded her a moment of silence. Enjolras was the first to rally, apparently determined not to let the danger they had brought to her doorstep go unrecompensed.

‘So we proceed to phase two. It’s safe to assume that most of the city will have seen one of the hijacked boards, so start conversations. The painting is also still circulating covertly, and someone has attached a list of names to it now, names of those who have gone missing in the last week.’ Everybody heard the unspoken words ( _missing because of us_ ). ‘We know they’re angry,’ Enjolras continued, ‘so it’s time to ready everyone for the catalyst, whether they know they’re being readied or not.’

‘They will never _be_ ready,’ Grantaire’s voice rang out from the corner. ‘Face it, this is the end of your plan. Everybody’s hungry, and exhausted, and there’s talk of another med-resistant epidemic headed our way. Cholera, even. They don’t have the time to debate the merits one way or the other of some scribbled drawing they saw a couple of times on their way to their daily drudgery. And even if they do get angry enough to actually do something -- and I’m an expert on inertia, so you’ll have to take my word for this -- it won’t last. Your perennial problem, Enjolras, is that you assume that everyone is like the people in this room. Is like you. Mostly, they’re a lot more like me.’

‘Just because you refuse to have faith in anything, Grantaire, doesn’t make you right.’ Enjolras’ reply was curt, each word bitten off. ‘If you don’t have a contribution to make, go to sleep or something.’

Prouvaire could only dimly guess at his captain’s motivations, but he wondered whether the clench of that fine jaw held not just irritation but sadness. A sorrow that Grantaire’s commitment to their ideals had begun and ended with that single painting, that none of the enthusiasm of his requests to be given something to do had ever translated into action. Truth be told, he shared some of Enjolras’ frustration, but far greater was his disheartenment that Enjolras would not take the time to understand properly. To see what Grantaire as he was, instead of measuring him up to the ideal of the citizen and finding him wanting. That he would surely lose Grantaire if this were ever to happen -- it hardly bore contemplating --

‘Yes only this time, Jehan can back me up.’

The sound of his name was like a hand yanking on his collar, and he cast Grantaire an alarmed glance, not liking this turn at all. There was much that was unconventional about the relationship between his captain and his lover, and his relationships with both of them. But never before had Grantaire sought to involve him in his twisted games, and he was not prepared to shoulder some pawn-role.

‘Because he can testify,’ Grantaire continued with a smug edge, ‘that just the other day we were invited to swap platitudes with our nearest neighbours. They have suffered at Central’s hands, perhaps more than most of us in this room. And not once did they make the slightest noise of discontent with their lot, though I know both their workplaces, and they would have passed no less than two billboards each every day on the way there. This is your audience, Enjolras, and your audience is not listening to you. How can you expect them to give you their lives, when they won’t give you a few minutes of their attention?’

‘We’re not asking them to give us their lives, but to take them back for themselves,’ Combeferre explained patiently, but with a hint of the irritation he normally reserved for Marius. They were all walking the highwire, too close to the end to accommodate a Doubting Thomas in their midst, but Prouvaire had stopped listening to the argument. Grantaire’s tone had betrayed him, the faintest catch on the word ‘lives’, the barely-disguised current of relief throughout.

Grantaire was glad their plan was foundering.

Unwilllingly glad. But glad nonetheless.

Grantaire thought they were doomed to fail, that every one of them would die should they attempt insurrection, and that those -- if any -- who stood with them would die too. He had sometimes confessed, under cover of darkness when he could feign being half-asleep that he hated the feeling of contributing nothing to his friends’ cause. Surely though the prospect of making a contribution that hastened their slaughter would be unbearable to someone who professed with such earnestness that his friends were his best feature. He would be willing to wager that Grantaire wanted nothing more than for _Leviathan in Chains_ be forgotten so that Les Amis might live a little longer and he be absolved of their deaths.

Prouvaire did not know which urge was stronger: to praise that soul that was too kind and too gentle for its own good, or to shake Grantaire out of his selfishness. To scream at him that there was so much more at stake than the lives of a few friends. That they all not only forgave him for his part in whatever might happen, but welcomed it. Not only tolerated but loved him, and would be honoured to have him stand upright in their midst. Grantaire did not bear the burden of their futures anymore than the brushstrokes of _Leviathan in Chains_ did. Equally, he had no right to rejoice, however unwillingly, at his own conviction of their continued safety. Not when that safety was bought with the suffering of the starving and the hopeless.

Grantaire’s relief was not permitted to last, however. The following day, he returned from an excursion more drunk than usual, his face painted with elation and horror like a funerary mask. Prouvaire was half-way out of his seat, quite wild with fear himself, when Grantaire spoke.

‘I come bearing glad tidings.’ His dramatic pause was marred by faint swaying, and Prouvaire moved to catch him. ‘Our dear neighbour is ready to be one of your merry band of dreamers with guns. Ambushed me earlier, y’see. _Very_ shifty he looked too. Said I seemed to know most goings-on about town, so did I know anything about those paintings. Excellent use of inflection he had too. Just an eye-waggle short of number one suspect, so, y’know, that act needs work. But he said he’d seen them around -- no shit! They were everywhere! -- and that he’d heard rumours that they were still circulating, and that those behind it were still at large. Well, I dodged expertly, of course, but hinted that I might perhaps have known something once and I might even remember it someday. He offered me some of the good old miracle elixir, which rather accounts for my current state, though I’m sure you can’t tell from my demeanor that I am under the influence.’

‘What did you tell him next?’ Prouvaire deftly sidestepped the oncoming ramble, guiding Grantaire to take a seat.

‘Nothing, of course. For all I know, his entire existence is an elaborate ruse! How do I know he even really lives next door, huh? We see him come out of the front door, and we see him go into the front door, but you and I both know that is no guarantee for what a person does in between. Combeferre keeps saying anyone could be a spy. Well, what if _everyone_ ’s a spy? What if we were the only ones left who aren’t? What if even we are spies and don’t know it? It’s not like we even have a guarantee of our own existence, let alone about what a man does after going into a flat that’s ostensibly his--’

Sensing Grantaire was getting carrried away once more, Prouvaire went in search of some food and pressed it on him, hoping that it might balance out the alcohol a little. Besides, who knew when R had last eaten? The others tried to get him to eat, of course, but the attempt was often futile. Grantaire stared at the plate in his hands with wistful bafflement before glancing inquisitively up as though asking for instructions.

‘Eat.’

‘Oh.’

He ate, and as he did so, a little colour returned to his cheeks. Not enough to restore their usual ruddiness, but rather a pale rose that tinged his features quite charmingly. The balance between the pallor of his heightened emotions and the natural redness of his skin produced a glow that looked fresh and healthy. It was a glimpse of a long-shut possibility that made Prouvaire’s heart twinge with sadness.

‘Tell me what you said to him,’ he pressed once Grantaire had finished the food.

‘Does it matter?’ There was a hopeful note in the run-together vowels.

‘Of course it matters.’

‘Mostly we danced the circumspection tango because neither of us much wants to become acquainted with the sub-basements of Central. But the gist of it… Well, the gist of it was that he can’t take it any longer. He’s had issues with Central for a while -- did you know there was a story involving his little brother?’

Prouvaire shook his head, a little ashamed.

‘Not sure what, he was really cagey with the details, but he sure knows how to hold a grudge,’ Grantaire continued without waiting for an answer. ‘The baby was just the latest, and last, outrage. Long story short, if hypothetically someone were to attempt something at some point, he would hypothetically stand with them, and he reckons his pals in Sub engineering would too. He doesn’t want in on any meetings, says he’s not a thinker, but I think he’s also not the type to want to run the risk unless he’s got a weapon in his hand. But yeah.’

‘R, that’s wonderful!’

‘If you say so.’

Prouvaire caught hold of Grantaire’s face and planted a kiss on his frowning mouth, then on his nose and on each cheek. With each, Grantaire’s expression softened a little until he looked unbearably young and vulnerable.

‘It might actually work,’ he breathed, hardly daring to utter the words in case doing so broke the spell.

‘It will, it will, it will,’ Prouvaire trilled.

‘He might actually… If anyone could...’ Grantaire continued, picking up the pace and tumbling over his own tongue in his haste. ‘Oh god, it might work.’ He looked stricken, torn between wild joy and utter despair. ‘But he’s just one guy, and his friends. What difference can they make? A few grains of sand standing their ground against the storm. A few grains of sand never tipped any balance.’

Grantaire jerked wildly to his feet. ‘I have to go.’

‘Where to?’

‘I need to tell the others.’

Scrambling into his outdoor gear -- and seizing half of Prouvaire’s in the process -- he all but ran out and Prouvaire sank slowly into his chair. Grantaire was going to report to Enjolras, of that there was no doubt. A redemption of sorts for every disappointment, real or imagined, every time he had begged to be included in their plans only to let them down when it mattered, every little thing he kept bottled up, stored and memorised and revisited and fled from into other bottles. All could now be absolved in his mind by bringing him one piece of good news and a glimmer of faith.

 _It hurts my heart to watch you, deep-shadowed_.

Redemption was a strange thing. Grantaire had brought him the news like a frightened child; he would present it to Enjolras as a proud father, erasing his qualms with bravado he had found in Prouvaire’s arms. Prouvaire knew which was worth more, and would not trade places with Enjolras for all the world.

 


	8. Chapter 8

‘I came for sustenance,’ Grantaire grandly announced his entrance. ‘Lovely to see you two in here.’

He flopped down at Joly and Bossuet’s table and made himself comfortable, arching his back until it produced a series of satisfying pops that had Joly pulling a face. A server caught his eye and promptly brought two good-size bottles of pills -- it probably wouldn’t be enough, but it was an excellent start, so start he did.

‘You planning on consuming that whole lot?’ Bossuet inquired. Grantaire did not miss the glance he exchanged with Joly and frowned at both of them. He had not come here to face the inquisition -- there were easier ways of achieving that, and most of them involved waltzing through Central’s doors and -- no. He hastily cut off that train of thought and instead tossed back a handful of ethanol capsules.

‘Pshh, this and more. This _lot_ won’t exactly get me very far.’

‘You have particularly far to go?’

‘Further than you could dream, Eagle. Joly could lend you all four of his wings and you’d still not go as far as I must. Too many feathers, too many books, too many people. I hate people. So it’s time I said adieu to them and _woosh_ , disappeared.’

Joly wordlessly pushed some food towards him, but Grantaire sniffed and pushed it back. ‘Nah, don’t waste it on me. I’m already feeling a little green around the gills, so I don’t think I could keep it down.’

‘You don’t _look_ ill...’ Joly said dubiously.

‘Oh but I feel so very ill indeed! At death’s door, practically.’ Oh gods no. He clapped a hand to his mouth and bit his palm. No, no, no. ‘Some spirits, quick, to revive me!’

He threw back another brace of pills and belched, having swallowed too much air in his haste. It seemed he felt them rolling down his gullet, and he tracked their motion with his muscles, tried to picture them dropping into the acid bath of his stomach. Felt the rush as their content hit his blood-stream. Did they ever make it to his stomach? It would be a miracle of engineering to have them dissolve in the esophagus and their alcohol absorbed on the way down. Ingenuity in inebriation. Ingenuity in inebriation. It had a good ring to it. Ingenuity in all things.

It was an ingenious world, after all. With a talent for elegance and minimalism and efficiency and ruthlessness and callousness and pitiless treatment of its enemies. Grantaire rolled more pills down his throat and ignored Joly’s entreaties to moderation.

‘Have you felt ill long?’ Joly asked with a friend’s scepticism and a doctor’s concern.

‘Huh?'

‘You said you feel ill. How long have you been feeling off?’

‘Oh, twenty-something years...’

‘No, I meant today’s illness specifically.’

‘That? Oh, right. Ignore me, I’m blowing everything out of proportion. I get like this sometimes. I’m sure everything will be fine.’

Everything had to be fine. For a given value of ‘fine’. Better, then, to say that everything had to continue as it was. Yes, that was it. Nothing should change. Grantaire would sit and consume too much alcohol, and his friends would tell him to stop, to slow, to pipe down and to shut the fuck up. He’d laugh at them and they would give him something to hold onto. He’d wander in from wherever he’d been and they’d scold him for being late and at the end he would leave with his dear Jehan. It was the way things were meant to be. Why couldn’t everything stay as it was forever?

‘Are you sure you’ll be alright?’ Bossuet urged, his eyebrows drawn together.

‘You’re pouting,’ Grantaire replied, and reached to pull at his friend’s cheek with his thumb in an effort to make him smile. He stopped short at the last minute, though, and dropped his hand to the table again. It narrowly missed the plate which Joly still hadn’t reclaimed.

‘I’m totally fine,’ he insisted. ‘Someone other than me should eat that though.’

He had no right to feel disappointed when Joly caved in and took back the food. Why should he feel disappointed? He had won, after all. To the extent that anyone ever won. That was the secret of it all: acknowledge the ultimateness of failure and the senselessness of striving for greater victory. Then find and score small victories. Daily things. Like sitting at a table with good, kind people, and laughing together at the latest hole in Bossuet’s coat. It was all Grantaire ever asked, to be allowed to sit like this in the presence of Les Amis. That wasn’t a lot to ask, was it? He had no right to it, certainly, but it was not unreasonable to crave that boon of the universe, so small on a cosmic scale?

More pills went hurtling headlong into his mouth. The first bottle was near-empty and suddenly it seemed to be staring back at him. There had been a child on the way here that had stared just like that, all hollow and vitreous. Of course, hollow and vitreous was inherent in the nature of bottles. It wasn’t in the nature of children, though… He hadn’t been able to do anything for that child. Hadn’t been able to smile -- his face would not contort the way it was meant to and the effort nearly made him retch. The others could have helped. Courfeyrac would have had a kind word, Combeferre a scrap of food saved for such an occasion, Bahorel a joke, Feuilly a magic trick. Prouvaire a promise of better things to come. They all helped so much, all the time ( _helped him_ ), and never seemed exhausted. How did they do it?

By boundless goodness and sheer delusion, in all likelihood. They dreamed the most beautiful of dreams, in which hollowness and glass would be the properties of bottles only. On the very brightest of days, Grantaire could close his eyes and conjure images of those dreams. They were no doubt more drab than anything his friends imagined, but he could do it. Just about. And they _were_ beautiful. Nobody had ever accused him of not _loving_ enough… They all saw misery everywhere. The crucial difference was that he saw only the misery, while his friends managed to overlay it with some mad, foolish vision woven of wishful thinking of the kind normally only induced by intoxicants.

He almost begged _please stop. Please just end this now. Ignore what my stupid neighbour said about that stupid painting. None of it means anything. Please please please._ But he had never been able to convince anyone of anything (save the damn painting, which had convinced his friends they stood a chance. How had they not been able to see its emptiness? It had all been Prouvaire’s idea. That bloody trip to the museum. Dear, beautiful, wonderful Prouvaire, Jean, Jehan, who had a birthmark like grains of sand on one shoulder-blade. Why had he let himself be talked into adding anything to their Children’s Crusade?) _Only don’t give up, because I couldn’t bear it if you, any of you, gave up. Just -- please… Please live._

It would be a shame to leave those last few pills -- he finished them with a majestic sweep of his arm as his friends watched with worry in their dear eyes.

‘Well it’s been grand, but I must be going. Far far away and all that. I commend you to each other’s care and company. Be good.’

He rose, feeling quite steady -- that bottle had, after all, only been a start -- but he could not stay here. Grabbing the second bottle, he gave a jaunty salute that had his shoulders drawing up in unexpected pain, and stumbled out. The street’s clamour welcomed him and his feet joined in its rapid rhythm. The press of humanity headed home and swallowed him. They were not individual faces that could frown at him from on high and chide him for his dissolute ways and lacklustre existence. Instead, they became a warm blur that generously extended its anonymity to him, and allowed him to merge and be a part, not apart. A thrice-blessed reprieve that gave the alcohol time to burrow into the tiniest of his veins and make them feel full of air.

The numbness had coated his skin by the time he got home, and the rattle in his pockets promised more where that came from. There were more bottles in the apartment too. He settled into his favourite chair and cracked the second open. Each pill a perfect sphere. They were beautiful in their own way, a tiny world compassed in his hand. To be held between his thumb and his index finger. Slightly springy when squeezed, just a little. He swallowed one. Then two. Three. Five. The only mathematics he had ever been any good at, because it could be explained in a single word: more.

With each, consciousness of the horror that surrounded him retreated. His friends smiled still, would smile forever, there would be warm arms around him and Jehan’s voice in his ear telling him all about a different trip to a different museum. The world narrowed until it sat snugly around him and he filled it entirely.

Jehan had told him about ‘ch-ch-oh’ and he had been pleased. ‘Orgasms in a bottle! Whenever I want! This may be the most chemistry I have ever learnt.’ It came back to him now, because the Old World had called orgasms the little death. _La petite mort_. They must have been having some damn good sex… And little deaths could be recovered from. Just a little death. Some sleep and you were good to go again tomorrow. Death after death after death, a new plunge and no lasting effects. Almost like the pills he swallowed -- Prouvaire’s metaphors always so beautifully apt. And then there was _la grande mort_. Only there wasn’t, because he had shrunk the universe to his own existence and death had no dominion in him yet and so it did not exist. Not here. He would stay here forever.

The door opened and the world expanded a little to accommodate a second soul. Jehan must have found him, because that was just what he did. The seat dipped and Grantaire slid down the incline into waiting arms.

‘Hey, I should tell you a story,’ he mumbled, and his tongue felt thick and clumsy -- thicker and clumsier than usual. ‘There’s this girl I used to know… Pretty. So pretty. Too pretty for this world, and she had a lot of friends.’

He paused. Sighed. Sniffed, gathered himself again.

‘And there was this one friend in particular. Guy from Central. Claimed to be totally gone for her, and she didn’t believe a word of it, because she’s not stupid, and she had a lot of friends. But he was good for a laugh and she thought why the hell not. And --’ he stopped. Chewing on his lip, he frowned in confusion. The words themselves were new, but he had told this story before, he was sure of it. To Jehan, even. In this very room. ‘There’s an angry girl,’ he began again, breathing more laboriously, ‘who lives not twenty minutes from here. She’s a factory girl, because who isn’t? And every morning she gets up angry, and she thinks angry thoughts, and she goes to bed angrier. You think I’m all gnarled up inside? You should meet her.’

He trailed off again and twisted so he could look up at Jehan, whose face loomed moon-like and reassuring.

‘I -- this is all wrong,’ Grantaire whispered, trembling.

A hand settled in his hair and fingernails scratched at his scalp. It hurt a little. That was good.

‘Were I a god, we wouldn’t need any of this,’ Grantaire picked up again. ‘It’s damn careless, you know, to think of revolutions as a get-out-of-jail-free card. As a deity, it’s your job not to fuck up and then resort to revolution to clean up the mess. I’d be better than that, because I wouldn’t just create things and then fuck off. I’d stick around, keep an eye on everything, day by day, link by link. None of this divine absenteeism. Why be unknowable? Someone explain it to me, where’s the joy in that? But then again, I am too ordinary. I’d be too preoccupied with small things, and not see how much I’d fucked up the big picture, because I’d be cross-eyed from being so close. And sometimes, the world needs the extraordinary. It needs you. People like you. Strings of yous. Bright and swift and -- and _incisive_. To blaze a trail and correct the gods’ fuck-ups. You and yours will see all the mistakes, the snarls and the ugliness, and oh but I want to shake people and tell them to look up at you.’ He reached up as though to illustrate, and Jehan caught his hand and pressed it to his own cheek. The skin was warm and a little rough.

‘Oh but they’re peddling lies, Jehan,’ he continued, sounding desperate to his own ears. ‘I have seen their heavens, and I have scratched the surface and found that it’s just as dust-brown underneath as our world is. The gods are running on fumes, just like the rest of us. It’s not their fault, of course -- things are rarely anyone’s fault -- and I mean no disrespect. But I am an observer, and I must report what I see, and I must warn you, my love, lest you make a bad bargain.’

Jehan’s arms tightened around him and they clung to each other, their heartbeats wildly out of time and rapidly running out of time. They breathed together and held each other in their narrowed universe for two. It helped a little.

‘It’s my bargain to make,’ Jehan answered.

Grantaire forswore the gods and wept for his friends.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free as ever to drop me a line [here](http://at-heart-a-gentleman.tumblr.com)


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